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Times-Courier

English

The Keep

Eastern Illinois University
The Keep
The Pemberton Hall Ghost Pemberton Hall
10-25-1997
Hunter of Midwest Hauntings
Times-Courier
Follow this and additional works at: http://thekeep.eiu.edu/pemberton_hall_ghost
This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Pemberton Hall at The Keep. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Pemberton Hall
Ghost by an authorized administrator of The Keep. For more information, please contact tabruns@eiu.edu.
Recommended Citation
Times-Courier, "Hunter of Midwest Hauntings" (1997). The Pemberton Hall Ghost. 3.
http://thekeep.eiu.edu/pemberton_hall_ghost/3
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HU:riter of Midwest hauntings 
Troy Taylor is East Centra I Illinois' melanchoiy story. For those who think th~re may be 
expert on paranormal act•IV•lty more to the spirit world than o~eractive imagination, 
· . Taylor of(ers another explanation. . 
·,, BY JOE RICHARDSON 
.. IZZif:ois Country Living 
Ti:oy Tayl~r Stan~ atop a 19th-centwY stoi:ie stair" . 
case m the Illlddle of a.cemetery beginning at the end of 
a Decatur cul-de-sae.'·: ·· . . . · 
Behind~ fQurtarnishedtombstone~ carve1 · 
holes in the ho;rizo~ fb.eir faces nearly swept · 
clean by t:he wm~ z;=im and time. The Barrack" 
man family pl?tlSil t tpe oldest site in the . 
~mete~, but if the sj:.Ories qre to be believed, 
it's certainly one of the most active. 
~ether orll:ot the Bai-rackmans have 
anytbingy.<i do with ~e_ghost that's sup-
posed 1:0 ~there, l,hay~,i:ioidea," Taylor . 
says, Sitting on the stai:ci. . . . . · · . 
The auth?r of sli:D<>oks'and a q~~ 
terlymagazme d~with the haunt-
ings in the Midwe~, Taylor would know 
better than :mpst *8 th~area's premier · 
~s~ o~the paranor:m.ru, '.l'aylor's 
mvestigations have taken him from 
city libr~es to coun,~manswns t,o 
the occaSional cemetery.L '~· ' . 
· "She.'s Slipposed to sit'oh the. top 
step," Tay~or says, ~~the stone 
beneath him. · .· ., .. ~,,, ,;=;,' '· · . . . . 
Below his fiD.ger8,'1e~rs ;~liing. 
out the ~~~an.~riame 
are outlined m lichens. _.• . · 
"She just sits here ~q 6-ies, fil.e 
never makes a sound.z: . , 1, . · 
According to l~en,<!- the Biu-rackman ghost appears 
as the sun set:s, head 1?Af ~ed, her semictransp~nt · , . 
form cl?thed ma l?ng.: · ss. ,'Yberi the sun slips below '. 
the honzon, she disappeqrg_ . · , · . . . 
"Sh ' been seend · · es,,never . ·" Ur:ingthedayandneveraf" 
ter dark, Taylor sBld; Oply·at sunset." .. . · 
For those who categonze trues of the sup~rnatural · · 
as pure myth, Lady Ba+rackr:nan makes a romantic if 
., ~ 
"If indeed she does sit here, she could be a kiild of 
residual effect of a woman who sat on these steps and 
cried, day after day after day/' Taylor suggested. 
"Maybe she left aD. impression here_,,. ' 
Just as a young gi,rl named Mary Bregavy eVidently 
. · lefther:llnpr,essionsonaChicagosuburb. : .. ·. 
.·· ·. "Stories likel.fazydate all the way back~ the time 
·. ofthehorseandcarriage,". Taylci_rnotecl :-•· • ..• 
· This incarnation of the tale describes Bregavy .as a 
girl who lived onArcherAvenue in'Justii:e during the 
1930s. According tO legend, Bregavy was on her 
· way home from a party at the 0. Henry Ball-
room (now the Willowbrook)_ when the car. 
. ' in whieh she was a passenger jumped a 
ctrrb. " ' 
The driver lbstcciiitrol, smasblli.g head-
. long into a slipportforChicago's elevated 
train track. Bregavywas thrown from the 
.. automobile and died instantly. She was 
buried in Resurrection Cemetery off 
·.· Archer Avenue, no~ far from her home. 
. "According to the story, people have seen a 
• woman in a white dress hitchhiking on 
· the side of Archer Avenue. What makes 
tills stoiy different from the fypieal ur-
ban legend is the number of people who 
have picked her up," Taylor said. . 
"Cab. driyer8 will pick up this young girl 
and she'll say, "I need to go down 
Archer/ So theylltake her down 
Archer. When she gets to the cemetery 
she disappears. All kinds of people 
have actually seen her·on the road, 
picked her up, and had her vanish 
from the car." 
"' .. · .·· ':, , · Taylor said one of the most famous 
epis6des·iilvo1vi:Ilg Br~gavy's ghost occurre_d in 19?7, 
when a passing motonst spotted a young W!l peenng 
. through the cemete~ gate.. . . . : . .. ·~ . 
· "He thinks she's trapp~dmSI~e, so he goes to the 
. --·, 
cOntinLiecl ol1 c2' 
. df-Saturday, October 25, 1997 
LIFESTYLE 
*Hunter 
• •• < 
... Continued from C1 Spirit Seekers . · . 
:·~~·· One of the most common questions posed to Troy Taylor when he 
Jb,1ice," said Taylor. "They didn't find a woman, but when they got presents himself as a paranormal investigator is: ''Why?" 
t]tl:ire, the bars on the gates had been pulled apart, and there were· Taylor's interest began with newspaper reports of unusual phe-
s:friall hand prints in the iron. It's such a well-known story. I would say nomenon. He decided to see ifthere were more to the tales than eye-
slte's the most famous ghost in Chicago." witness imagination and printer's ink. · ~;:J3ut all Illinois ghosts aren't confined to cemeteries. .· · "When you form a research society, or make it public !hat yo~'re '.",~A legend involving a haunted house near.Greenville appeared in interested in investigating haunted places, you get,;i wide vapety 
th~Oct.11, 1940,editionofTheGreenvilleAdvocate.JohnN'owlan, of telephone calls." Taylor notes in the preface of Conductmg a 
i:\i<mrnalist and local historian, recourtted a bizarre story spun b. Y Paranortnal Investigation: A Workshop on the Fundamentals of 
G:Ffarles Smith a native of the little town of Smith Grove, The inci~ Hunting Ghosts." . . . ~r{nt involved~ pain-ridden woman and a custom-made coffin.,_ The paper was one of several materials offered by Taylor dunng 
~~Smith said in 1821 his grandparents bought a farm in the Smith · the first annual conference of the International Ghost Hunters So-
C:W;ove area of Bond County from the Leaverton family. Before the · ciety in Decatur last August. . ~vertons owned the land, another family (whose name is lost to "Many are obvious hoaxes, or at the very least, confused people lii~tory) lived there. The family included a woman suffering from who are mistaking natural events for ghostly phenomena. But 
~~:.unspecified ailment, possibly rheuma~oid arthritis. ~mith said there are those few calls that make everything worthwhile," Taylor 
bb,".Ei woman's body was so drawn she was incapable oflymg down, adds. "They're the ones that fit into the small percentage of cases ;~!Accordi_ng to legend, pain twisted the "{:()ID,tin's Il!i:O:~ to !~e,,r~x~. , that appear to be·gen:uine." . · 
tent that she often threatened to return after her death to haunt Rather than outfitting themselves with arcane instruments, 
those left behind. After her death morticians were unable to ghost hunters typically are equipped with standard recordi_ng 
straighten her body. A custom-made coffin was built to fit the body,' eqUipment such as camcorders, tape recorders and cameras with 
and the woman was buried sitting up. high-speed film, along with some not•so-st~n.dard tools of the trade 
Shortly after the burial, a land company bought the farm. The such as electromagnetic field meters and digital thermal scanners. 
home was abandoned and left to Wither in a thicket of trees. For "One of the most important things you have' to possess for suc-
years, passersby reported hearing mysterious noises coming from cess as a ghost hunter is an open mind,". Taylor says "You have to 
the abandoned home, until John Leaverton finally purchased the be positive about the investigation and open to whatever phenom-
land, razed the old house and built his own home on the site. The ena that my occur." 
source of the noises was never discovered. · As for other ghost hunters' motivation, Taylor says many are 
-·.Another story set in the same area revolves around a grave simply searching for proof that ghosts are real - "evidence that 
which may still exist in Smith Grove Cemetery. James Stubblefield they're spirits of the dead who still roam this world," he says. 
(a once prominent name in the area) was buried near what was "Ifwe take this into account, it means that we're accountable for 
then the center of the cemetery. · · the things we do in our life. We have to ask ourselves if we really 
Shortly after the funeral, stories of odd occurrences at the grave want to try to repair any damage we've done after we're dead, or 
site began to circulate. Some reports had ghosts walking over while we're stiU alive." · 
Stubblefield's grave. Others identified lights hovering around the 
site. 
Be it a clear an,d moonlit night or under a dark and starless sky, 
the reports always were the. same, with the only exception coming 
on foggy nights, when the lights (or spirits) became mote active. 
Some searched for a rational explanation. Area residents sug-
gested the roving lights were reflections from a nearby residence. 
But the original account notes that lights were often seen hovering 
over the grave when neighboring homes were dark. 
Other accounts state that the lights moved even when the ob-
se-rvers were standing very still, suggesting that their motion 
couldn't be attributed to a shifting point of view. 
"I was courting my wife at that time," Smith told Nowlan during 
the original account. "One night, as we were driving near (the 
cemetery), she said she wished she could see it. I drove around 
where she could see the grave and, sure enough, there was the 
light." 
Smith said his wife never wanted to see the grave again. 
Reports of the mysterious lights continued for nearly two years 
after Stubblefield's funeral. Then, just as suddenly as they ap-
peared, the lights vanished. 
As have many of the ghosts which once haunted Illinois. . 
Although Taylor works to unearth new hauntings and keep the 
old lore alive, many of the stories which shaded our cemeteries and 
lingered over our abandoned buildings are forever lost. 
· So while some ofus will wonder about the light burning in the old 
w~rehouse, or quicken our step in the dusky graveyard, or pause to 
ffi'ake sure those are our footsteps echoing off an attic wall, most of 
us won't. · .. .. _ , 
Yesterday's stories, like yesterday's spirits, draW:t~€'it ·:1'>"6'Wer ·• 
from being remembered. Iri the absence of memory, legends die, 
and like forgotten ghosts areleft to fade away. · ' 
Preserving local haunts 
Old ghosts may never die, but old buildings do. With the pass-
ing of their original owners, some of the most impressive, his-
torically significant structures in Illinois have fallen into ruin. 
Isolated cemeteries also are victims of abandonment, their 
markers often destroyed by neglect or vandalism. In recent 
years a number of restoration groups have worked to improve 
the condition of these sites. Not coincidentally, many paranor-
mal investigators or "ghost hunters" also are avid historians 
and part-time preservationists. 
A number of paranormal researchers have played active roles 
in campaigns to save these failing structures and forgotten 
cemeteries. 
"If we're going to save these sites, we've got to use them," 
noted Jon Musgrave, a journalist and Southern Illinois histo-
rian. 
Musgrave, along with other researchers, turned up enough 
information about Hickory Hill Plantation (also known as the 
Old Slave House) to arguably make it one of the most histori-
cally significant horp.es in Southern Illinois. 
Musgrave passed the information along to Troy Taylor, who 
incorporated slivers of history into his own article about the 
house, which appeared in the spring 1997 issue of"Ghosts of the 
Prairie Magazine." 
Taylor highlighted the need to preserve the home, character-
izing it as "a fascinating historical museum" offering insight 
itit:0}1,·perfod :ofli'idden, history. , , ; ... p > .. , · • · · 
, For more information on efforts to preserve Hickory Hill 
Plantation, C:o:ritact jon Musgrave atjonm@midamer.net, or PO 
Box 1142, Marfori 62959. 


Hunter of Midwest Hauntings

Eastern Illinois University

Eastern Illinois UniversityThe KeepThe Pemberton Hall Ghost Pemberton Hall10-25-1997Hunter of Midwest HauntingsTimes-CourierFollow this and additional works at: http://thekeep.eiu.edu/pemberton_hall_ghostThis Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Pemberton Hall at The Keep. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Pemberton HallGhost by an authorized administrator of The Keep. For more information, please contact tabruns@eiu.edu.Recommended CitationTimes-Courier, "Hunter of Midwest Hauntings" (1997). The Pemberton Hall Ghost. 3.http://thekeep.eiu.edu/pemberton_hall_ghost/3. . - .. - .. - ... ... r ... . • •. • • •• • • •,• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • • • • • • .• • ... • • • • • • • • . .. ... .... .. - - - - - - - . - - . - . - - · ~···········,····· · ·· · ········· · ·· · ··· · - · · · ·· ·· ·· · ··· · ······ · ···· ··· ·· · ··············· · ····· · ······ · HU:riter of Midwest hauntings Troy Taylor is East Centra I Illinois' melanchoiy story. For those who think th~re may be expert on paranormal act•IV•lty more to the spirit world than o~eractive imagination, · . Taylor of(ers another explanation. . ·,, BY JOE RICHARDSON .. IZZif:ois Country Living Ti:oy Tayl~r Stan~ atop a 19th-centwY stoi:ie stair" . case m the Illlddle of a.cemetery beginning at the end of a Decatur cul-de-sae.'·: ·· . . . · Behind~ fQurtarnishedtombstone~ carve1 · holes in the ho;rizo~ fb.eir faces nearly swept · clean by t:he wm~ z;=im and time. The Barrack" man family pl?tlSil t tpe oldest site in the . ~mete~, but if the sj:.Ories qre to be believed, it's certainly one of the most active. ~ether orll:ot the Bai-rackmans have anytbingy.<i do with ~e_ghost that's sup-posed 1:0 ~there, l,hay~,i:ioidea," Taylor . says, Sitting on the stai:ci. . . . . · · . The auth?r of sli:D<>oks'and a q~~ terlymagazme d~with the haunt-ings in the Midwe~, Taylor would know better than :mpst *8 th~area's premier · ~s~ o~the paranor:m.ru, '.l'aylor's mvestigations have taken him from city libr~es to coun,~manswns t,o the occaSional cemetery.L '~· ' . · "She.'s Slipposed to sit'oh the. top step," Tay~or says, ~~the stone beneath him. · .· ., .. ~,,, ,;=;,' '· · . . . . Below his fiD.ger8,'1e~rs ;~liing. out the ~~~an.~riame are outlined m lichens. _.• . · "She just sits here ~q 6-ies, fil.e never makes a sound.z: . , 1, . · According to l~en,<!- the Biu-rackman ghost appears as the sun set:s, head 1?Af ~ed, her semictransp~nt · , . form cl?thed ma l?ng.: · ss. ,'Yberi the sun slips below '. the honzon, she disappeqrg_ . · , · . . . "Sh ' been seend · · es,,never . ·" Ur:ingthedayandneveraf" ter dark, Taylor sBld; Oply·at sunset." .. . · For those who categonze trues of the sup~rnatural · · as pure myth, Lady Ba+rackr:nan makes a romantic if ., ~ "If indeed she does sit here, she could be a kiild of residual effect of a woman who sat on these steps and cried, day after day after day/' Taylor suggested. "Maybe she left aD. impression here_,,. ' Just as a young gi,rl named Mary Bregavy eVidently . · lefther:llnpr,essionsonaChicagosuburb. : .. ·. .·· ·. "Stories likel.fazydate all the way back~ the time ·. ofthehorseandcarriage,". Taylci_rnotecl :-•· • ..• · This incarnation of the tale describes Bregavy .as a girl who lived onArcherAvenue in'Justii:e during the 1930s. According tO legend, Bregavy was on her · way home from a party at the 0. Henry Ball-room (now the Willowbrook)_ when the car. . ' in whieh she was a passenger jumped a ctrrb. " ' The driver lbstcciiitrol, smasblli.g head-. long into a slipportforChicago's elevated train track. Bregavywas thrown from the .. automobile and died instantly. She was buried in Resurrection Cemetery off ·.· Archer Avenue, no~ far from her home. . "According to the story, people have seen a • woman in a white dress hitchhiking on · the side of Archer Avenue. What makes tills stoiy different from the fypieal ur-ban legend is the number of people who have picked her up," Taylor said. . "Cab. driyer8 will pick up this young girl and she'll say, "I need to go down Archer/ So theylltake her down Archer. When she gets to the cemetery she disappears. All kinds of people have actually seen her·on the road, picked her up, and had her vanish from the car." "' .. · .·· ':, , · Taylor said one of the most famous epis6des·iilvo1vi:Ilg Br~gavy's ghost occurre_d in 19?7, when a passing motonst spotted a young W!l peenng . through the cemete~ gate.. . . . : . .. ·~ . · "He thinks she's trapp~dmSI~e, so he goes to the . --·, cOntinLiecl ol1 c2' . df-Saturday, October 25, 1997 LIFESTYLE *Hunter • •• < ... Continued from C1 Spirit Seekers . · . :·~~·· One of the most common questions posed to Troy Taylor when he Jb,1ice," said Taylor. "They didn't find a woman, but when they got presents himself as a paranormal investigator is: ''Why?" t]tl:ire, the bars on the gates had been pulled apart, and there were· Taylor's interest began with newspaper reports of unusual phe-s:friall hand prints in the iron. It's such a well-known story. I would say nomenon. He decided to see ifthere were more to the tales than eye-slte's the most famous ghost in Chicago." witness imagination and printer's ink. · ~;:J3ut all Illinois ghosts aren't confined to cemeteries. .· · "When you form a research society, or make it public !hat yo~'re '.",~A legend involving a haunted house near.Greenville appeared in interested in investigating haunted places, you get,;i wide vapety th~Oct.11, 1940,editionofTheGreenvilleAdvocate.JohnN'owlan, of telephone calls." Taylor notes in the preface of Conductmg a i:\i<mrnalist and local historian, recourtted a bizarre story spun b. Y Paranortnal Investigation: A Workshop on the Fundamentals of G:Ffarles Smith a native of the little town of Smith Grove, The inci~ Hunting Ghosts." . . . ~r{nt involved~ pain-ridden woman and a custom-made coffin.,_ The paper was one of several materials offered by Taylor dunng ~~Smith said in 1821 his grandparents bought a farm in the Smith · the first annual conference of the International Ghost Hunters So-C:W;ove area of Bond County from the Leaverton family. Before the · ciety in Decatur last August. . ~vertons owned the land, another family (whose name is lost to "Many are obvious hoaxes, or at the very least, confused people lii~tory) lived there. The family included a woman suffering from who are mistaking natural events for ghostly phenomena. But ~~:.unspecified ailment, possibly rheuma~oid arthritis. ~mith said there are those few calls that make everything worthwhile," Taylor bb,".Ei woman's body was so drawn she was incapable oflymg down, adds. "They're the ones that fit into the small percentage of cases ;~!Accordi_ng to legend, pain twisted the "{:()ID,tin's Il!i:O:~ to !~e,,r~x~. , that appear to be·gen:uine." . · tent that she often threatened to return after her death to haunt Rather than outfitting themselves with arcane instruments, those left behind. After her death morticians were unable to ghost hunters typically are equipped with standard recordi_ng straighten her body. A custom-made coffin was built to fit the body,' eqUipment such as camcorders, tape recorders and cameras with and the woman was buried sitting up. high-speed film, along with some not•so-st~n.dard tools of the trade Shortly after the burial, a land company bought the farm. The such as electromagnetic field meters and digital thermal scanners. home was abandoned and left to Wither in a thicket of trees. For "One of the most important things you have' to possess for suc-years, passersby reported hearing mysterious noises coming from cess as a ghost hunter is an open mind,". Taylor says "You have to the abandoned home, until John Leaverton finally purchased the be positive about the investigation and open to whatever phenom-land, razed the old house and built his own home on the site. The ena that my occur." source of the noises was never discovered. · As for other ghost hunters' motivation, Taylor says many are -·.Another story set in the same area revolves around a grave simply searching for proof that ghosts are real - "evidence that which may still exist in Smith Grove Cemetery. James Stubblefield they're spirits of the dead who still roam this world," he says. (a once prominent name in the area) was buried near what was "Ifwe take this into account, it means that we're accountable for then the center of the cemetery. · · the things we do in our life. We have to ask ourselves if we really Shortly after the funeral, stories of odd occurrences at the grave want to try to repair any damage we've done after we're dead, or site began to circulate. Some reports had ghosts walking over while we're stiU alive." · Stubblefield's grave. Others identified lights hovering around the site. Be it a clear an,d moonlit night or under a dark and starless sky, the reports always were the. same, with the only exception coming on foggy nights, when the lights (or spirits) became mote active. Some searched for a rational explanation. Area residents sug-gested the roving lights were reflections from a nearby residence. But the original account notes that lights were often seen hovering over the grave when neighboring homes were dark. Other accounts state that the lights moved even when the ob-se-rvers were standing very still, suggesting that their motion couldn't be attributed to a shifting point of view. "I was courting my wife at that time," Smith told Nowlan during the original account. "One night, as we were driving near (the cemetery), she said she wished she could see it. I drove around where she could see the grave and, sure enough, there was the light." Smith said his wife never wanted to see the grave again. Reports of the mysterious lights continued for nearly two years after Stubblefield's funeral. Then, just as suddenly as they ap-peared, the lights vanished. As have many of the ghosts which once haunted Illinois. . Although Taylor works to unearth new hauntings and keep the old lore alive, many of the stories which shaded our cemeteries and lingered over our abandoned buildings are forever lost. · So while some ofus will wonder about the light burning in the old w~rehouse, or quicken our step in the dusky graveyard, or pause to ffi'ake sure those are our footsteps echoing off an attic wall, most of us won't. · .. .. _ , Yesterday's stories, like yesterday's spirits, draW:t~€'it ·:1'>"6'Wer ·• from being remembered. Iri the absence of memory, legends die, and like forgotten ghosts areleft to fade away. · ' Preserving local haunts Old ghosts may never die, but old buildings do. With the pass-ing of their original owners, some of the most impressive, his-torically significant structures in Illinois have fallen into ruin. Isolated cemeteries also are victims of abandonment, their markers often destroyed by neglect or vandalism. In recent years a number of restoration groups have worked to improve the condition of these sites. Not coincidentally, many paranor-mal investigators or "ghost hunters" also are avid historians and part-time preservationists. A number of paranormal researchers have played active roles in campaigns to save these failing structures and forgotten cemeteries. "If we're going to save these sites, we've got to use them," noted Jon Musgrave, a journalist and Southern Illinois histo-rian. Musgrave, along with other researchers, turned up enough information about Hickory Hill Plantation (also known as the Old Slave House) to arguably make it one of the most histori-cally significant horp.es in Southern Illinois. Musgrave passed the information along to Troy Taylor, who incorporated slivers of history into his own article about the house, which appeared in the spring 1997 issue of"Ghosts of the Prairie Magazine." Taylor highlighted the need to preserve the home, character-izing it as "a fascinating historical museum" offering insight itit:0}1,·perfod :ofli'idden, history. , , ; ... p > .. , · • · · , For more information on efforts to preserve Hickory Hill Plantation, C:o:ritact jon Musgrave atjonm@midamer.net, or PO Box 1142, Marfori 62959. 

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Hunter of Midwest Hauntings

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